Geocaching in Shropshire and beyond…

Cheshire Railings / Crewe & Nantwich Circular Walk

Isaac has started secondary school this week and so we decided to go for an easier day out caching this weekend. Starting next week, he’ll be doing Saturday activities at school so won’t be able to come caching as often as we’d like. Hopefully this is not the end of an era and he’ll still have enough energy (and time!) left to come out caching on Sunday’s, even if it’s every couple of weeks.

We’ve been watching all the new caches build up in the Sandbach, Congleton and Holmes Chapel areas for the last few months, so decided today was the day to go and find them as they often appear on our closest to home not found front page.

We were not sure what to expect as a series based on metal railings does not sound that inspiring. Needless to say our fears were right and they were all in very generic locations by road junctions. The downside was quite a few of them seemed to be in very thorny areas too – lots of hawthorn bushes and other prickly things near railings to scratch your hands and arms with.

Having said that, I know the cache owners have taken time and money to put these caches out so we don’t want to sound unduly negative as we do appreciate the smileys.

There was not really much to report other than what I’ve said above. In between the railing caches, we did some Post Haste ones, which were even easier as they are all hide a key’s on the back of red post boxes. Caching really does not get much easier as they were all instant finds :-).

On the way, we did do a really nice cache on the South Cheshire Way part way up the north side of Mow Cop and in a really nice spot with views over the whole of Cheshire. Easily the best cache of the morning.

By lunchtime we were getting a bit bored so stopped off for lunch and an ice cream at Brereton Country Park near Holmes Chapel. Suitably fortified, we headed off towards Sandbach to try some different caches (via one or two remaining railing caches – well, we can’t just drive past them if we know they are there can we?).

We were soon starting on the Crewe & Nantwich (C&N) circular walk caches, which were much more our thing. Some decent walks, nice locations and generally caching as it should be. Our only grumble would be there are too many micros in places that could hold a larger cache, but that’s not a great problem.

In between the C&N caches, we stopped to do a cache at a great location where the farmer builds a sculpture out of bales of straw every year. In the past they have done a rocket, Jodrell Bank and a windmill. This year it’s a HUGE Big Ben, complete with working clocks. Very impressive indeed!

I’ll shut up now as I’m beginning to sound like a right moaner and that’s not my intention at all. Not the best day out caching we’ve had, but definitely not the worst either. At least most of the caches were really easy and thus quick finds.

On the upside, we did get 40 finds for the day and did clear quite a few caches off the closest to home not found list.